


Charming

by kingofquietstars



Series: Love? Love! [1]
Category: The CiviliTy of Albert Cashier - Stevens & Wooden/Deratany
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Canon Trans Character, First Meetings, M/M, Musicals, coac
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 09:06:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13291602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingofquietstars/pseuds/kingofquietstars
Summary: The college house occupied by Jeff, Walter, and Billy was an absolute mess until Albert came into the picture. Little did Albert know, even though he helped the boys learn to do laundry and cook real food, he would cause more troubles for Jeffrey when he realizes he may have more than simple friendly feelings towards Albert.





	Charming

**Charming- _adjective_ pleasant or attractive; (of a person or manner) polite, friendly, and liable.**

“DOOR!” I heard Billy yell from down the hall. The washer had overflowed… again… and I was elbows deep in the water trying my best to keep the suds from pouring all over the floor. Seeing as I was soaked all down my front and covered in soap bubbles, I wasn’t in the best position to go open the door.

“You get it!” I yelled back at Billy.

“Bit preoccupied here, Jeff, if you want a working microwave by tonight!” He got me there. No microwave meant no dinner, unless you count the half-empty bucket of cheese balls we stole out of the student union last week, which we didn’t. Walter wouldn’t be bringing anything by like he usually did since he was still in a study coma for his summer class finals, and microwaveable meals were the only thing left in the fridge. So I, sopping wet and covered in soap, had to go answer the door. And damn, I’m glad I did.

You were a tiny little guy, barely more than five feet high, and had a scowl on your face like you were ready to fight anything that stood on the other side of our door.

“Hey,” you said, tentatively, trying to muster up confidence, “I’m Albert–”

“Albert!” I cut you off when the name clicked in my head. “Albert, you’re the new roommate! I’m Jeffrey,” I stuck my hand out to shake yours before realizing that it was still covered in soap. I pulled back sheepishly, my own excitement having gotten the best of me again. “Sorry, bit of a mishap, nothing to be too worried about, happens all the time, like last week when I accidentally mixed up all the colors and–”

“I’m not even getting half of what you’re saying,” Your scowl turned into a smile warmer than I could have imagined and I was so speechless I almost forgot to respond.

“My mom always tells me that one day I’m gonna forget to breathe. Here, come on in, I’ll show you around. It’s not much, but it’s home enough.” The first thing you saw was Billy, sitting on the floor in the middle of a pile of what used to be the microwave. You looked between the two of us, one boy taking apart a microwave in the doorway, and the other dripping wet and still covered in bubbles. We weren’t the best at first impressions. “This is Billy,” I explained, hoping you wouldn’t re-think your decision to live with us. “Don’t worry, he has a habit of messing with our machines. He just likes knowing how they work, you know, he’s been doing this ever since the two of us were little kids. Everything usually gets put back together no problem, except that one time he took my bike apart when I was nine and he messed it up. Billy, this is Albert, he’s the new roommate.”

“Hey,” Billy took his eyes off the remains of the microwave for the first time since we’d walked in. He tilted his dirty baseball cap up to keep the hair out of his eyes, but it didn’t work well. The curly, brown mess still spilled out over his forehead through the hole in the back of the cap. “Nice to meet you. Don’t listen to anything Jeff says, I put his bike back together just fine.”

“It had no brakes!”

“Well, neither do you!” Billy yells after us as we started to walk through the rest of the house. I did a lot of the talking, and you let me go on about how we never used the stove because of that one time we almost lit the house on fire and how Walter usually would bring takeout but he was holed up in the library for the week and how everything was a little bit broken around here but we managed just fine anyway. We started moving all your stuff into your room when you finally said something.

“Jesus Christ, how have you boys managed to survive so long?” I couldn’t help the short laugh that escaped me. You were really something else, Albert.

“Not really sure. College kids are the peak of ingenuity. I’ve got duct tape, snacks, and no sense of personal safety, it’s all I need in the world.” You shook your head at me, chuckling quietly as you realized how much of a mess our lives had really been before you stepped in.

“Well, looks like I came at just the right time. You were about to put dish soap in the laundry again.”

“Soap is soap, I thought it was all the same.”

“You’ve got a lot to learn, Jeffrey.”

And so for the next few weeks you taught me and Billy and Walter how to be adults. Our washing machine stopped overflowing (most of the time) and our dishes didn’t have weird stains on them anymore and we got rid of all the trash that had been laying around for too long. You got Walter to go to sleep at reasonable hours instead of letting him stay awake for days at a time doing homework and chugging Red Bull. You taught Billy to use the stove instead of just taking it apart, and he only burned himself three times before he got it right.

You were good for more than just learning to do chores the right way, too. You’d join me and Billy with our marshmallow shooters when we were shooting pigeons off the driveway. One time you accidentally got locked out of the house so you climbed up a nearby tree and crawled in through a window, even though I had gotten home by that point and you could have gone through the door if you’d wanted to. You just wanted to see if you could. The rest of us were always impressed when we found you making out with at least three separate girls at every party we went to. There was always something about you that just made them all love you. You were so easily likeable, and pretty easy on the eyes, too. For a guy, that is. Not that I would know. You just had a sweet face was all. I could understand why girls liked it.

I tried to be helpful at home, too, but I always got a little distracted and ended up breaking something. Like one morning when I tried to make breakfast just a few weeks after you moved in. I always had a habit of waking up early, ready to start the day and get moving. I’d gotten the coffee started and even made pancake batter (the powder out of the box that you mix with water, but it doesn’t matter, I still made it). Just as I got a few started cooking in the frying pan, you came in all disheveled and grumpy like usual. You were a sight to see in the morning: drooping eyes that could barely see straight, ruffled bed head that almost looked intentionally messy, and that same scowl that was always on your face, but in the mornings it was grouchier. It told the world that you were not happy to be awake and you would not put up with any shit until after at least two cups of coffee.

You walked like a zombie on auto-pilot to the coffee pot and poured a large mug for yourself. You drank your coffee black, blacker than even Walter took it, and he had built up a tolerance for caffeine during his four years of pre-med. I didn’t know how you could stand it, but I supposed you were always full of surprises. You sat at the small kitchen table, staring off into space while you downed your first cup for the morning. I couldn’t help but look at you. Grumpy, bed head, black coffee, and wearing my flannel shirt that you had stolen out of the laundry, sleeves falling almost to your knees, the shirt was so big on you, all of it made me feel… well, I wasn’t quite sure what, but I knew it made me smile, like one of those big, stupid smiles that kids get when they look at puppies.

“I love you,” I heard myself sigh before I knew what I was doing. My eyes flew wide open in shock at what I had just said. Damn mouth always saying things before I thought about them! Luckily, you were still in your morning haze and hadn’t heard me clearly.

“What?” You asked, eyes snapping out of your thoughts to stare into mine. I’d never noticed how blue they were before. I struggled to find something else to say instead.

“Oh, uh, nothing.” I stuttered. “Just, um… pancakes?” I turned back to the pan and saw that I had forgotten to flip them over and the bottoms were singed black now. My shoulders slumped and I let out a defeated sigh. “Not again.”

You came and looked into the pan at the black pancakes and chuckled at what you saw. This wasn’t the first time I’d burned our food to a crisp, so I suppose you had learned to just let it roll off your back. You just sighed as you laughed at the sad, charred circles.

“It’s a good thing you’ve got a such pretty face, Jeffrey, or else you’d be eating takeout courtesy of Walter for the rest of your life.” I stopped listening after you said I had a pretty face. The entire world stopped. I felt like I had just woken up and I had never been able to see so clearly before. That stupid smile crept on my face again and a weird, warm feeling spread all over my body. I snapped out of it once I realized you were staring at me again, thankfully with good humor, but I knew you saw it all.

“Uh, I… I just remembered, I have to go meet Collins today, I’ve got things to talk to him about,” I tripped over all my words in a nervous frenzy as I backed away from you, trying to cover up how flustered I was and probably not doing a particularly good job. I picked up my jacket from the back of the kitchen chair and shuffled out of the house. “You can make the rest of the pancakes, I probably won’t be back until later and you’re better at actually cooking them anyway, because, you know, you don’t burn them so bad, sorry I did that again…”

I ran out of the house as fast as my legs could carry me. What I had told you wasn’t a complete lie– I was going to visit Collins, it just wasn’t for school things. I probably went to the advising center more than any other kid on campus, but I never went for actual school advising. But Collins loved me. Sure, he’d tell me to come back when I had an actual academic question and needed advising, but he still let me come in and talk to him about anything. To be fair, I did need actual advice this time, and wasn’t that just what the college advising center was for?

“Collins!” I burst into his office as usual (he had stopped being surprised by my visits somewhere around sophomore year) and I leaned over his desk to make sure he was actually listening. Sometimes he would try to tune me out, but I wouldn’t let that happen today. “Albert just called me pretty.”

“Good morning, Jeffrey,” Collins responded with his booming voice, not even looking up at me, “I was wondering when I’d see you again.” I leaned closer to him, trying to make the severity of the situation clear to him. His head finally tilted up and he looked at me, completely unenthused with my presence.

“Albert. Called. Me. Pretty.” I hit my hands against his desk for emphasis. “And I don’t know what to do about that!”

“Who is Albert?” Collins finally gave in to my need to sort through this problem.

“Have I really not told you about him yet? I should have. Albert is my new roommate. He moved in a few weeks ago. You’d love him Collins,” He’d gotten me started talking about Albert, and now I was on a roll and I wasn’t quite sure how to stop. I didn’t want to, anyway. “He’s a tiny little thing and he’s got the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen and he’s the sweetest boy I’ve ever met, he’s a bit reserved but he’s just the best once you can get him to trust you and open up, and he doesn’t even get mad at me when I burn the pancakes like I did this morning or when I put the wrong soap in the washing machine, he just laughs it off and tells me it’s a good thing I’ve got a pretty face and Collins, he told me I have a pretty face!”

“Breathe, Jeff,” Collins was still much less enthusiastic about this than I had hoped he would be. “And watch out, you’re practically drooling on the carpet.”

“Collins,” I settled down just a little bit, somewhat offended at his comments, “What do I do?”

“Well,” Collins said as he slowly stroked the beard covering his face, thinking about his next words, “I think what most people do in this situation is pull themselves together, go back home, and tell that boy you love him, too.” I stared at Collins in disbelief for a few minutes. Had he really just said that?

“Love?” I sputtered out. “L… love? Psh… I’m not gay, Collins, I don’t love Albert… He’s just a friend. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had. So maybe I sometimes like looking at him in the mornings when he’s all ruffled and grouchy and got bed head, and he steals my shirts and I don’t even mind and sometimes I like the way he looks in them, and he doesn’t let people in real easily but once he does he’s so easy to like, and you can tell when he likes someone when he stands close to them, because he doesn’t do that with just anyone, but I got so happy the first time he stood close to me, and when he smiles his eyes crinkle at the edges and you can see he’s just so happy, and I like to hear him chuckle really low and I notice how he drops his chin to make his voice deeper and it’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen, Collins, and whenever he’s in a room I can’t help but smile bigger than I ever have and I feel so warm like I could melt but in a good way and maybe I accidentally did tell him I loved him this morning and oh my god, I’m in love with Albert.”

“Took you long enough.” Collins leaned back in his chair, satisfied with his work. I leapt out of my chair, triumphantly laughing at this discovery. I loved Albert. I loved Albert.

“I love Albert!” I shouted the words as I ran out of Collins’ office. I didn’t notice any of the people staring at me as I ran home shouting the words. I didn’t care about any of them. All I cared about was that I loved you, Albert.


End file.
